EVSC will close one of its nontraditional high schools at the end of the school year

EVANSVILLE – The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. will close one of its nontraditional high schools and split the students among the corporation’s other five schools.

Harwood Career Preparatory High School will shut its doors at the end of the school year, the corporation announced in an email to employees on Monday. It will be replaced by “Harwood Centers” in every EVSC high school that will provide the same services students were getting in the standalone school.

According to spokesman Jason Woebkenberg, the EVSC shared the decision with Harwood families late last week. He didn’t specify when teachers and administrators were notified, but said they had previously been given "data" showing the move may benefit students.

Where the decision wasn’t discussed, however, was in an open school board meeting.

School trustees were apparently made aware of the transition in an executive session last month, but never in the portion of the meeting open to the public. Woebkenberg called the move a “staffing decision,” making it “the responsibility of EVSC senior leadership,” such as Superintendent David Smith.

Teachers and staff at Harwood will be given the option to either work in the new Harwood Centers or be reassigned somewhere else within EVSC.

“No one is losing a job over this,” Woebkenberg said.

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How the move will work

Harwood provides “a non-traditional learning environment for students in grades 9-12 who may have experienced challenges in traditional schools,” its website states.

It used to be a branch of EVSC's Academy of Innovative Studies, but changed its name in 2018: a switch that provided a renewed jolt of school pride and purpose, principal Kristine Eichholz said at the time.

Students behind on credits, struggling with attendance, or experiencing other problems could be reassigned there. It focused on preparing them for the work force and is catered to kids with individual education plans.

The new “Harwood Centers” will work as schools-within-a-school, setting up branches at Bosse, Reitz, Harrison, Central and North high schools. In the note to parents, EVSC lauded the change, saying it will keep students enrolled with their friends at their home schools as well as give them an opportunity to take part in extracurriculars.

It could also expand Harwood’s services to students who, under the old system, may not have been sent to a separate school, Woebkenberg said.

Students will meet with staff this week to discuss next steps and how the move will affect them. The centers will open at the start of the 2023-24 school year.

How the decision was made

Ann Ennis isn’t saying the change is a bad idea.

The former school board member, who declined to run for re-election after one term and campaigned on increasing transparency between the administration and the public, thinks the EVSC could have “many good reasons for doing what they’re doing.”

What she does oppose, though, is the how the decision was apparently made.

On Feb. 23, an EVSC official sent an email to local media organizations attached with notices for the meeting scheduled for the following Monday. The notice for the executive session – where board members meet in private with Superintendent Smith and others – vaguely laid out what would be discussed.

One topic read, simply, “school consolidation.” That was the notice for the Harwood discussion, Woebkenberg said.

The closing – or as EVSC calls it, “transition” – had been discussed in private, however.

Board vice president Terry Gamblin told the Courier & Press that Smith had talked with board members about ideas to make Harwood “stronger,” but couldn’t recall if those discussions took place in executive session or during one-on-one conversations.

“There’s so much going on (and) I don’t want to tell you wrong,” he said.

Ennis said she couldn’t recall the change ever coming up in public during her tenure as a school board member.

“It seems to me the EVSC gets in its own way through poor communication,” she said. “Because at a minimum, as a citizen who’s been very active in public education and as a former school board member and as a person who is a volunteer at several of the schools, (I know) plenty of people who have some input. And giving them an opportunity to digest (the move), even if it’s a good decision, seems logical.”

Woebkenberg told the Courier & Press the EVSC didn’t share the information in public because they wanted to keep the conversation contained.

“We certainly didn’t want the families hearing a public report of this getting shared out in a meeting when we were able to (do) that in executive session,” he said. “And then were able to move that conversation to school staff.”

There’s a limit to what can be discussed in executive sessions. According to Ennis, they can only tackle safety and security, labor negotiations, real estate and specific – not blanket – personnel issues.

She said Smith and others classifying the Harwood move as a staffing issue may be “threading a very narrow needle.”

“If (Smith) can do this without the school board’s vote, that’s interesting to me,” Ennis said. “I would have asked questions in public.”

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC will close one of its nontraditional high schools